3rd Annual Fire Kidd Thread - Volume 2 (Horst Interview pg 14)

[EastSideBucksFan]

Went on 105.7 this morning with Bill Michaels to talk Kidd and trade deadline

http://www.1057fmthefan.com/media/audio-channel/henning-%E2%80%9Cyoung-excuse%E2%80%9D-getting-tired-and-old

[yannisk]

If coaching does not matter let's replace Kidd with an actual coach, in the worst case the results will be the same.

Of course coach does matter. It probably matters less in the nba than Europe/College, nba teams have so many games and traveling that there are fewer practices.

[yannisk]

Picks. PHX would also have our 2nd round pick. Good stuff, huh?

I know they need the pick asap for depth. However, it might not be the worst thing to convert it right away this year so they're more able to use 1sts in any trade scenarios going forward rather than the unknown that it is now.

2nd rounders should be available to buy as a few teams have multiple this year

I think most, if not all, would agree that the Bledsoe trade was a win-now trade. You give up 2 draft picks (and Monroe), regardless of protections, for a veteran. This means the front office and owners view, or at least viewed, the team as on the precipice. This is in direct contrast to Jason Kidd's view that the team is still "young" and "developing." Teams ready to compete make win-now trades, not young and developing teams. The front office also flat-out cut Liggins and GP2, two players that were spot-starting and were regular rotation players for Kidd. These instances are examples of the disconnect that Kidd has with the front office. I think we can add this to the growing pile of reasons that Kidd does not belong with this organization.

The funny thing is that Kidd (even though uses the "too young" narrative) has pushed for "win-now" trades or most precisely "win a few more games now to save my chair" trades

[dogswithbeesintheirmouths]

Believe it or not, there was actually a column in a Wisconsin newspaper yesterday that was mildly critical of Kidd. Printed in real ink and everything.

http://host.madison.com/wsj/sports/basketball/professional/tom-oates-bucks-coach-jason-kidd-s-plea-for-patience/article_37a907f3-49ca-5b8b-8da1-bbf9cd70753f.html

Tom Oates: Bucks coach Jason Kidd's plea for patience is wearing thin

MILWAUKEE — After a recent game, coach Jason Kidd summed up the Milwaukee Bucks’ roller-coaster ride of a season in a single sentence.

“One of the hardest things in this league to do is be consistent,” Kidd said, “and we are struggling with that.”

Every single night.

Whether it’s the performance level from game to game or even quarter to quarter, whether it’s effort or execution, whether it’s the offense or defense, whether it’s playing good games against good teams or bad games against bad teams, the Bucks have struggled to find consistency. They never know from one night to the next what they’re going to get. Sometimes it looks pretty good. Other times it looks like they don’t care, aren’t good enough or aren’t well-coached.

What it adds up to is this: The Bucks are fighting for the seventh or eighth playoff spot in a season that began with them talking about securing home-court advantage in the Eastern Conference.

This week showed the Bucks in all their glory. Playing without a hint of energy or effort in the second half, they lost by 18 points at Miami on Sunday. The next day, they had one of their best all-around efforts of the season in a nine-point victory at Washington. Back at the Bradley Center on Wednesday night, the Bucks dropped a 106-101 decision to Miami after leading for much of the middle two quarters.

Overcoming the Bucks’ inconsistency is a riddle Kidd has been unable to solve in his fourth season as coach. They have a 23-21 record near the midpoint of the season, but you get the idea they could be so much better, even though Jabari Parker isn’t due back from knee surgery for another few weeks.

The Bucks have a solid starting lineup. They have a likely first-team All-NBA selection in Giannis Antetokounmpo. They have two bona fide NBA scorers in Khris Middleton and Eric Bledsoe, who was acquired in November for Greg Monroe. And they have two floor-stretching shooters in Malcolm Brogdon and Tony Snell.

Still, they can’t find any level of consistency. More and more, people are wondering why that is.

“Just youth, being young,” Kidd said Wednesday night. “We have a young team that is understanding it has a lot of high expectations from the outside and understanding what’s realistic and being able to meet that and understanding that it’s always been about energy and effort. That’s where we’re not being consistent.”

Truth be told, the youth excuse is getting old. Really old. Of the Bucks starters, the only one who has fewer than five seasons in the NBA is Brogdon, last year’s NBA Rookie of the Year.

The Bucks were expected to show more progress this season and it hasn’t happened. Again, Kidd is preaching patience with a young team.

“We don’t have a microwave to pop them in and speed up the process,” he said. “Giannis, I think this is his fifth year. Just understanding he’s in a different environment, understanding being one of the best players in the world, that’s new.

“There’s no book of how to handle that. You’ve got to go through it. When you look at this team, there’s just maybe a coach that has been through that. There’s not another player that’s been at the top of the mountain and understands that every night you have a bull’s-eye on your back that the team is coming to show you up. So you’ve just got to go through it and talk about it and understand how we can get better as a team.”

In the meantime, the list of possible causes for the Bucks’ inconsistency is growing. Take your pick from the following list.

Their offense, which is heavy on letting Antetokounmpo, Middleton and Bledsoe work one-on-one, lacks NBA-level creativity. Their defense is poor at protecting the rim because it lacks a true center, starter John Henson is slight of build and young Thon Maker looks like a 3-point shooter who doesn’t defend or rebound. Their bench is very thin, with Snell or Brogdon (whichever one isn’t starting) the only real firepower. Antetokounmpo plays really hard but is still learning how to be the alpha dog on a contending team. There is no vocal leader on the floor and communication suffers as a result. Finally, Kidd is still coaching like he has a young team when maybe the time has come to start demanding more.

This much we know: With the Bucks, it’s always something. Against the Heat, they allowed Hassan Whiteside to dominate the paint with 27 points and 13 rebounds and in the fourth quarter turned to one-on-one basketball after moving the ball well through three quarters. Kidd called out his team for being selfish as it scored only 22 points in the final quarter and lost the lead.

“Everybody has to do their job every night,” Middleton said. “That comes with being consistent as a team. One guy doesn’t need to do everything on a nightly basis. Being consistent means being a team out there. If one guy has a bad night, the team can lift that guy up.”

So far, that hasn’t happened. Young or not, the Bucks continue to play like they are.

“You’re going to have to keep talking to them to get through it,” Kidd said.

“Until it clicks that they need each other, then this is who we’re going to be. We’re going to be a team that wins two and loses two.”

In the NBA, that’s a roller-coaster ride to nowhere.

[yannisk]

The amount of times Kidd uses "understanding" in his interviews should be a fireable offense

[econniption]

If coaching does not matter let's replace Kidd with an actual coach, in the worst case the results will be the same.

Of course coach does matter. It probably matters less in the nba than Europe/College, nba teams have so many games and traveling that there are fewer practices.

You bring up a good point. Let's use Pascal's Wager on Jason Kidd:



So, in case coaching does matter, we should fire Kidd.

[averageposter]

There is an offensive scheme, its just not real deep. The scheme on offense is designed the same way the defensive choices are made. Length.

The repeated actions are probably easiest to see when Its Khris plus bench or Giannis plus bench in the halfcourt. The effort is spent creating a switch at put either Giannis or Khris on a smaller man, usually in the mid to high post and then work from there. Its a reasonable place to start especially given the development of the players over the last few years and the lack of a dynamic PG pre-Bledsoe.

The problem in the droughts is from there if teams are successful more often than not walling off the paint for Giannis, or Khris isn't carrying his options well shooting the ball, the rest of the team is often not finding ways to help. There isn't a lot of motion to let these guys work. And the gravity of Giannis in that position creates some very strong shifts to wall that paint off. On the whole the offense is in a better place than the defense though, so those halfcourt failures against teams that have success taking away some of Giannis game or Khris's aren't quite as frustrating.

You'd like to think Thon is a great fit along side Giannis in that second unit, but he has to get the shots , make himself available for them etc to pull at that wall in the paint. It doesn't happen often enough to pull them out of those sets. Its probably the strongest reason Liggins was so frustrating, he worked hard defensively and they obviously felt that shoring up the second unit defense was the best way to get back to the starters but offensively the drop off was big, and hitching your wagon to the last guy added to the roster was frustrating. Brogdon and Delly move with the ball, without it Delly seems to at least find open gaps and make himself available well, but no one really has the pull of a specialist yet. When teams do wall him off seems to occur night that we can't hit a three or can't get the ball to the open guys timely enough to punish them.

I'll say this , one guy who worked, like Reddick, Korver, etc with frenetic energy would change the look of these second units dramatically, but none of our three point "specialists" appear to be capable of that type of catch and shoot. And the only guy worthy of the volume and percentage of 3 Point Specialist was/is Telly. We have some capable shooters but no great ones.

Henson is really the only guy being used as a roll man, Thon has been hilarious in that role which carries its own set of frustrations given his measurables. Giannis doesn't see a ton of action that way and Parker might help, but Henson can sneak in more of those since he's like 5th on the things they need to worry about list.

[truly]

My biggest fear is that somehow the Bucks get lucky and win a playoff series purely due to talent (Giannis/Midds gets hot etc) and they decide to keep him.Honestly i dont see what can change if he is fired now and someone from his staff takes over.If i could i would fire them all and bring in Fizdale.

Who knows what winning a playoff series would lead to? Maybe eventually the ECF, the Finals, a ring? The mental picture of Giannis and Kidd hoisting the Larry O'Brien trophy must give you nightmares.

ECF?Finals?With Kidd as the coach?

I am sure now that you are just trolling.There is no way you actually believe Jason Kidd can coach a team to an NBA title.

[jakecronus8]

I'm settling in on rooting for just missing the playoffs. As painful as it may be, missing the playoffs and relinquishing our pick to Phoenix may be enough frustration for the owners to can Kidd. Much more beneficial long term than some extra ticket revenue and a mid first round pick that we'd likely screw up anyway.

[Wonka]

Kidd should be fired solely for continuing to put Giannis out there for 40 a game when he’s dealing with knee issues just because he’s “young enough to handle it.”

[Cooleyo47]

I'm settling in on rooting for just missing the playoffs. As painful as it may be, missing the playoffs and relinquishing our pick to Phoenix may be enough frustration for the owners to can Kidd. Much more beneficial long term than some extra ticket revenue and a mid first round pick that we'd likely screw up anyway.

Me too, because this is the truth, IMO. Kidd will be gone when it's clear that Phoenix will exercise our pick this year. They kind of showed their hand with those pick protections because there was no intention for it to be conveyed in 2018.

[Gianstoppable]

Jason Kidd should be the new Mayhem guy for Allstate, he would be perfect

[Chapter29]

I feel like its up to the GM and medical staff to step in and put Giannis on a minutes restriction. 28, 32, 34 whatever. Get that knee right. Take as many days off as needed. Kidd cannot play him 40 then.

[hege53190]

Kidd should be fired solely for continuing to put Giannis out there for 40 a game when he’s dealing with knee issues just because he’s “young enough to handle it.”

Yeah 108 minutes in 3 games/4 days for your franchise talent that is battling a bad knee is negligent.

All the other stuff terrible rotations, bad schemes, inability to identify talent, etc. can be washed away with a new coach/regime.

What can't be washed away is injuring the first top 5 talent the Bucks have had since I have been alive.

The minutes are bad enough but then when you hear Giannis in the interviews, it sounds like they are going all out in practice for hours on end.

It is time for Kidd to go now.

I loved the Billboard idea. But to change it up we should do a T-shirt giveaway at a game with the #firekidd emblem on it. I think it would be awesome to see 10,000 fans in white t-shirts with a firekidd logo on it. That would get national attention.

[raferfenix]

If Kidd is on the hot seat, watching how his team does without relying on Giannis for everything for a few games isn't going to help.

[VooDoo7]

I honestly believe the owners are out of touch with reality. I don't think they see or hear all the media and fans bitching about Kidd. Not to the extent that it's happening, at least. I don't think they pay enough attention to the games to even realize how terrible Kidd really is.

That's the issue with having billionaire hedge-fund investors as owners. This team is far from being their priority.

[JustinCredible]

I honestly believe the owners are out of touch with reality. I don't think they see or hear all the media and fans bitching about Kidd. Not to the extent that it's happening, at least. I don't think they pay enough attention to the games to even realize how terrible Kidd really is.

That's the issue with having billionaire hedge-fund investors as owners. This team is far from being their priority.

I want Kidd fired. Bad.

But I also don’t want owners that make decisions based on what fans want.

[VooDoo7]

I honestly believe the owners are out of touch with reality. I don't think they see or hear all the media and fans bitching about Kidd. Not to the extent that it's happening, at least. I don't think they pay enough attention to the games to even realize how terrible Kidd really is.

That's the issue with having billionaire hedge-fund investors as owners. This team is far from being their priority.

I want Kidd fired. Bad.

But I also don’t want owners that make decisions based on what fans want.

Normally I'd agree with you. But it's pretty obvious our case is a bit different than normal. The fans actually seem smarter than these morons.

[mke_design]

You don't even need the analytics at this point to draw this conclusion, we have a top 5 coach in name recognition but a bottom 5 coach in Xs and Os, and that couldn't be more evident then just watching this team play like we they are running in mud.

We sure seem to be mired in the Slough of Despond now, I agree, but I think better days are coming once we get past the Valley of Humiliation.

Then I hope Giannis (Christian) is the one impaling Kidd (Apollyon). That way we can just enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death and just get on with it already. Vanity Fair awaits...


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[Bernman]

I love how they framed the report: "the next 8 days". It's 2 games. So it'll be to avoid the embarrassment against Philly and at home against Phoenix who we should beat anyway. So no change in the team's record most likely.

Actions like these reinforce that while firing Kidd will be of benefit, it won't solve a lot of our problems. As with the previous regime, they go all the way to the top. We're sadly stuck with these frauds. No billboard nor avatar will change that.